Quasi-Biweekly Oscillation over the Western North Pacific in Boreal
Winter and Its Influence on the North American Temperature
Abstract
This study investigates the characteristics and climate impacts of the
quasi-biweekly oscillation (QBWO) over the western North Pacific (WNP)
in boreal winter based on observational and reanalysis data and
numerical experiments with a simplified model. The wintertime convection
over the WNP is dominated by significant biweekly variability with a
10-20-day period, which explains about 66% of the intraseasonal
variability. Its leading mode on the biweekly timescale is a
northwestward-propagating convection dipole over the WNP, which
oscillates over a period of about 12 days. When the convection-active
center of this QBWO is located to the east of the Philippines, it can
generate an anticyclonic vorticity source to the south of Japan via
inducing upper-tropospheric divergence and excite a Rossby wave train
propagating towards North America along the Pacific rim. The resultant
lower-tropospheric circulation facilitates cold advection and leads to
cold anomalies over central North America in the following week. This
result highlights a cause-effect relationship between the WNP convection
and the North American climate on the quasi-biweekly timescale and may
provide some prediction potential for the North American climate.